Enlightenment literature

The eighteenth century is often referred to by critics and historians as the Augustan Age: this is due to its similarities with the era of the Roman emperor Augustus (63 AB-CD 14): in both cases the extended period of civil calm and economic wellbeing followed governmental turmoil and uncertainty. The so-called Glorious or Bloodless Revolution of 1688 in England heralded a period of relative domestic peace and prosperity, which was to last for the entire first half of the century. The Glorious Revolution which ended in a compromise between the aristocracy and bourgeoisie established a rule of law, and the Act of Union (1707), that united Scotland and England as ‘Great Britain’, a political alliance.

In terms of structure and population distribution, Britain was essentially pre-industrial at the beginning of the century. By the end of the century, however, in had become a prosperous nation in the throes of an industrial and agricultural revolution, the like of which had never been seen before. Arkwright’s spinning jenny, Cartwright’s power-loom, and Watt’s steam engine set the stage for the far-reaching industrial revolution of the nineteenth century

In the eighteenth century England achieved, politically and economically, the position of a great power. By its victories over the armies of Louis XIV, England eliminated the danger of military domination by France. Its naval victories established its maritime supremacy, and this supremacy was reinforced by the capture of Gibraltar and the island of Minorca, which gave England the control of the western Mediterranean. The eighteenth century, however, witnessed many ups and downs in England’s foreign policy: the major among them are the foundation of British rule in India and the loss of the thirteen colonies in America which became independent as the United States of America.

England also achieved financial and commercial pre-eminence. London became the world’s largest seaport and financial centre. This development involved the growth in number and influence of the middle class of merchants and tradesmen.

But the eighteenth century was not an age of political stability. In spite of the growing influence of the middle class the vast majority of the population, however, did not have the right to vote. It was the landowning family oligarchies, together with the monarch, who possessed political power. The interests of these families were represented at court by two broad factions: the Whigs and the Tories. “Whig” was a term often applied to horse thieves and suggested non-conformity. Hence its application to those who claimed the power to exclude the heir from the throne. “Tory”, on the other hand, was originally an Irish term linked to papist outlaws. It was associated with those who wished to see the Stuart, James II (a Roman Catholic), restored to the English throne in accordance with hereditary rights. These two parties sought to win and hold public opinion by the aid of literature.

In the eighteenth century England was distinguished in science and philosophy. Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the law of gravitation and for 24 years was president of the Royal Society, was recognized as Europe’s foremost scientist. Very influential in Great Britain and Europe in general were two Scotsmen: the philosopher David Hume and Adam Smith, who inaugurated the modern science of economics by the publication of his Wealth of Nations (1876). Many fundamental ideas which have determined the character of the modern world either originated or received new emphasis in the eighteenth century. After the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660, the experimental sciences were establishing in men’s minds the idea that the universe in which we live is a world of ordered and invariable law. This image of the universe was projected on human society.

In England and in France it was a time when reason and good sense were the final court of appeal in matters of belief and conduct. The intellectual movement of the period received the name of Enlightenment (from French siecle de lumieres – Age of the Enlightened). Central to the Enlightenment thought were the use and the celebration of reason, the power by which man understands the universe and improves his own condition. The goals of rational man were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and happiness.

English enlighteners differed from those of France. While the French philosophers and writers “cleared the minds of men for the coming revolution”, the English enlighteners set no revolutionary aims before them as England had gone through the bourgeois revolution in the seventeenth century. Their aim was to establish a kingdom of reason. As it turned out later it was nothing more than the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie; eternal justice found its realization in bourgeois justice; equality reduced itself to bourgeois equality before the law.

For much of the eighteenth century there was a prevailing spirit of optimism: there was a tendency to put faith in the rational capacities of man. The powers of reason and common sense held sway over those of the imagination and the emotions. Social conventions, in the form of good manners and good taste, became rigorous. Order, reason and balance ruled the day, and this was a perfectly natural consequence of the de-mystifying and rationalist discoveries that occurred in and around this time.

The Enlightenment expired as the victim of its own excesses. The celebration of abstract reason provoked a contrary desire to begin exploring the world of sensation and emotion. The Terror that followed the French Revolution severely tested the belief that man could govern himself. The middle of the eighteenth century in England saw the inception of a new literary current – that of Sentimentalism. It came into being as a result of a bitter discontent on the part of certain enlighteners in social reality. The sentimentalists acutely sensed the contradictions of bourgeois progress and came to the conclusion that, contrary to all reasoning, social injustice still held strong and the power of reason was limited. The high optimism that marked much of Enlightenment thought, however, survived as one of the movement’s most enduring legacies: the belief that human history is a record of general progress.

The Enlightenment produced the first modern secularized theories of psychology and ethics. John Locke conceived of the human mind as being at birth a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which experience wrote freely and boldly, creating the individual character according to the individual experience of the world. Supposed innate qualities, such as goodness or original sin, had no reality. Thomas Hobbes portrayed man as moved solely by considerations of his own pleasure and pain. The notion of man as neither good nor bad but interested principally in survival and the maximization of his own pleasure led to radical political theories where the state was seen as a mutually beneficial arrangement among men aimed at protecting the natural rights and self-interest of each.

During the period of Commonwealth, the English people had been subjected to the austere regime of Puritan prohibitions. With the Restoration of 1660 came, as a natural reaction, a time of general profligacy and a cynical disregard of moral principles (at any rate in those fashionable circles which most influenced literature). ”The Queen Anne wits” were neither Puritans nor libertines, but sober-minded and accomplished men of the world. To them both Puritan “enthusiasm” and the profligacy of the Restoration “fop” were equally offences against good taste and good sense.

Periodization of Enlightenment literature. The first period is presented by Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Richard Steele (1672-1729), the publishers of a moralistic journal The Spectator, and the poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744). Though in their works the English enlighteners criticized different aspects of contemporary England, they never thought of struggling against the existing order, but, on the contrary, attempted to smooth over social contradictions by moralizing and proclaiming, as Pope did, that “whatever is, is right”. The essays and stories of Addison and Steele, devoted not only to social problems but also to private life, gave an impetus to the development of the novel. Still greater was the influence exercised by Pope on the eighteenth-century poetry. A man of extraordinary wit and learning, and the highest authority in literary art, he elaborated certain regulations for the style of poetic works and made popular the so-called heroic couplet (five foot iambics rhymed in couplets).

The writers of the second period of the English Enlightenment are more critical of bourgeois society and are responsible for the development of journalism and the formation of the novel which was to be called “modern”. The growth of industry and trade brought to the fore men of a new stamp who had to be typified in the new literature. The image of an enterprising Englishman of the eighteenth century was created by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) in his novel Robinson Crusoe. Jonathan Swift (1762-1745) ruthlessly exposed the mercenary essence of bourgeois relationships. In his novel Gulliver’s Travels he typified the bourgeois world in the repellent images of man-like creatures –Yahoos, drew a ruthless picture of the depraved aristocracy and satirically portrayed the whole of the English state system. Samuel Richardson (1789-1761) is credited as the founder of the psychological novel and also the author who shoed the abuse of power. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) elaborated the theory of the novel, displayed a more realistic understanding of human nature and presented a broad panorama of the eighteenth-century English society in his novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Tobias Smolett continued the satirical tradition by exposing political charlatans, mocking at the state system, prejudices and conventions presented in a grotesque manner. At the same time he created a gallery of common people conspicuous for their generosity, kind-heartedness and sense of humour.

Sentimentalism presents the third period of the English Enlightenment. The focus of attention is shifted from the fortunes of the hero himself to the nature of his family, environment and heredity. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) in his Tristram Shandy demonstrated a radical departure from the form of the Enlightenment novel in subject matter, composition, characters, and attitudes.

Enlightenment prose. The earlier part of the century was a golden age of prose. It was, however, a different kind of prose from that of the past: in line with the general reaction against the intricacies, fineries and rhetorical extravagances of late European Renaissance literature, the new prose was characterized by a certain restraint. It was simpler, clearer and more precise than that which had gone before. Whereas the Metaphysicals and Puritans had often tended towards verbal opaqueness and extravagant verbal games or unlikely associations, the new writers of both prose and poetry were more concerned with poise, balance, clarity and coherence. This was in part due to the rationalist tendencies of an age in which developments in the fields of experimental science and rationalist philosophies were leading to the predominance of a more reasoned and empirical way of interpreting reality. It was also a reflection of the desire for peace and order in a society emerging from a period of revolution and civil war.

Essays, journalism and, above all, the novel were the most important aspects of literary production in an age which was dominated by prose. The eighteenth century was a satirical age. With the Restoration of 1660 the Civil War did nor end, it merely shifted ground. It became a war of pamphlets and satire. Each of the two political parties had their own writers (Defoe wrote for the Whigs, Swift , for both of the parties). A proliferation of Protestant sects confused things even more because they were in conflict not only among themselves but also with the Anglican Church. In addition, there were the Catholics who were always suspected of wanting to return England to Catholicism. Thus the literary atmosphere of the times was politically volatile.

The abolition of the Licensing Act in 1694 marked the end of censorship and heralded a new period of freedom for what amounted to the beginnings of the modern press. Many accomplished writers of the age were encouraged to write articles or essays for the growing number of newspapers and periodicals. The subjects dealt with were current affairs, politics, literature, fashion, gossip, entertainment and contemporary manners. It was a prose frequently characterized by a refined simplicity; this, together with its almost conversational tone, was a symptom of a growing concern to reach the largest number of readers possible. This adaptable and logic-aspiring prose was most suited to those objectives held dear by the lovers of classical taste and social order - instruction, description and persuasion.

Only in the field of the novel, however, was prose to manifest its truly variegated properties and infinite flexibility. The eighteenth century novel - whilst varying considerably from author to author - represented a new departure from previous canons. It was a prose narrative of considerable length dealing more or less imaginatively with a world of actual human experience, consisting of a sequence of events connected one to the other, and involving a number of people in a specific setting.

As a reaction against seventeenth-century preoccupation with questions of religion, the writers tried to turn their readers’ minds from the mysteries of life and to focus their attention on its actualities. The novel took individual experience as its most important criterion, and the plots that had formed the backbone of English literature for many centuries - plots taken from history, legend, mythology and previous literature - were abandoned by the new novelists. Readers were presented with original plots acted out by often highly individual characters in singular circumstances. The English literature of the eighteenth century is primarily concerned with the everyday facts and interests of well-ordered, civilized human life as it transacts itself in London and in the quiet English countryside. It is pre-eminently a social literature. Swift sends his Gulliver to strange lands of fancy only to show his readers contemporary England from a new perspective. Pope’s The Rape of the Lock is set in a fashionable drawing-room. Gay writes of the busy streets of London. Characters are often given contemporary names and surnames, which was something new and served to reinforce the impression of realism still further.

This sense of realism extends to the background of the novels, too. The eighteenth-century novel reveals a great concern with the exactness of time. References are made to particular times of the year or even to days. Similarly, greater attention was paid to the physical background or setting. Where the action occurred became a question of great importance, and was the logical complement to the question of time. In the new novels specific references to names of streets or towns, together with more detailed descriptions of the objects situated in the variously defined interiors and exteriors of the physical world, helped form a solid idea of setting which rendered the narrative all the more “realistic.”

As to language of the novel, there was a general movement away from rhetorical and figurative language towards a more descriptive and denotative form. In its hankering after verisimilitude prose gained in realism, even if it lacked much of the polish and elegance that had characterized it in former times.

Enlightenment poetry and drama. The greatest poet of the Enlightenment is Alexander Pope, though in contrast to prose, poetry played a secondary role in the eighteenth-century. The peculiar stance of the Augustan age was that the poet was a social being whose private feelings were inappropriate material for public confession. The tradition of neoclassicism locked the poet into pre-conceived forms, well-balanced lines and a predictable diction. Every kind of poetic form – odes, pastorals, comedies, tragedies, satires and epics – was governed by rules as to the language, style, rhetoric and tone appropriate to that genre. Attitudes to the composition of verse were closely bound up to the Augustan concept of Nature which was seen as a universal and permanent model for imitation in both life and art. The literary models laid down by the likes of Homer, Virgil, Horace were, in their turn, an expression of the divine harmony and order of Nature. The poet’s task was to interpret and duly represent this balanced universe in conformity with these models. Pope’s translations of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad were in part responsible for the diction which was to become norm: Latinate constructions and an elevated vocabulary predominated, and rather than describe an object in more prosaic terms, poets resorted to periphrasis. Thus “fish” and “birds” became “finny tribes” and “feathered choirs”. There appeared a familiar stock of poetic words and phrases: vales were often “verdant”, the sword was “shining”. The decline of the lyric and the curbing of the imagination and intellectual conceits typical of the pre-Restoration verse, are further indications of the fact that poetry was bound up by the imposed notions of literary decorum. The function of the poet was no longer surprise the reader or listener with fantastic turns of intellectual thought, or to produce unlikely associations between different objects and ideas. Wit, or “fancy”, as it became known, was to be tempered by judgment. A fresh clarity came to characterize the eighteenth-century verse.

The age demanded sobriety from its poets: poetry dealing with civilization and social relations – as opposed to the introspective meditations of the feeling individual – was the order of the day. Interest focused primarily on the universal rather than the individual or the particular. Samuel Johnson wrote in his prose fable Rasselas: “…the business of the poet is to examine, not the individual, but the species: to remark general properties and large appearances … to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features as recall the original to every mind”. Satire, as a less personal form of poetry, took a leading role in early eighteenth-century poetry. Politically conservative and middle-class, both Pope and Swift showed a real concern over a Whig-dominated society, characterized by bribery and corruption. Much satirical poetry of the period fulfils a moralizing role. The notions of correctness and propriety which dominated English verse following the Restoration continued to hold sway after the death of Pope and were not even fully overthrown with the advent of the Romantics.

Despite the growing importance of blank verse, the heroic couplet remained the staple form of eighteenth-century versification. In the hands of such talented poets as Pope and Johnson it was employed with great skill and variety. Often used in epic or mock-heroic poetry, the heroic couplet often contained within its two lines a complete statement, which allowed the poet to achieve a witty effect of an epigrammatical quality

Like poetry, drama did not have many achievements in the eighteenth century. Little has survived the test of the time to remain in the modern theatrical repertoire. The blossoming of the novel meant that the major talents were diverted away from the theatre into the new form. Another reason was the stringent censorship introduced with the Licensing Act of 1737. The Act restricted the freedom of expression, subjected new plays to the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain, reduced the number of London theatres to two – Drury Lane and Covent Garden - and drove a number of good authors out of the theatre. The most celebrated eighteenth-century plays are those by two Irishmen, Richard Sheridan (1751-1816) (The School for Scandal, The Rivals) and Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) (She Stoops to Conquer) and the surprisingly original The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay (1685-1732), which acquired a new lease of life through Bertold Brecht’s twentieth-century adaptation The Threepenny Opera with the music by Kurt Weill.